A warning to the curious...

Over the past few weeks I've been re-reading all of Jasper Fforde's novels and am currently enjoying The Woman Who Died A Lot, his most recent story Thursday Next. For reason to this see the precdeing entry.

However I think I must have been overdoing it - or rather I must have overdosed - as today I seem to have read myself into the Book World and ended up in the Well Of Lost Plots.  I did not spend much time there, but I was atleast able to take a few photos as evidence.

Hopefully the Men in Plaid cannot operate in the Outland.

I've started so I'll finish...

This is all my own fault.  I've always watched Mastermind and inevitably the thought that came to mind was: I could do that.

Then earlier this year I found the Mastermind website which contained a selection of quizzes, which I tried and found that I was in the top [n]% of the population, where [n] is a reassuringly small number.  There was also a link to follow if you wanted to apply to take part - so I followed it, filled in the form, and then forgot all about it.

Several weeks ago I had a call out of the blue from the production team: an invitation to  meet up so that they could ask me some questions.  I think I answered quite well, as within a week I had another call offering me a place on the programme.  There were some further exchanges while we hammered out the detail of my specialist subject choices, but eventually we finalised a list of three subjects that were OK.

For the first round my subject is the novels of Jasper Fforde:

http://www.jasperfforde.com/

I follow this with the life of HH Asquith:



And for the final I've chosen Doctor Who (2005 to the present):

And now the hard work begins as I'm slowly realising what I've committed myself to: as a first step I'm currently re-reading all of Jasper Fforde's novels  (always a great pleasure) and listening to as many of them as I can find as audio books while I'm driving.

In addition there are two biographies of Asquith on my desk, even as I write this, but I've decided not to start re-watching Doctor Who until nearer the time.

The likely timescales for filming are September, October and November but with no indication yet as to broadcast dates.

This is an ongoing project, so watch out for further updates.



Belated Thoughts on the Jubilee

In all the excitement of the Jubile I missed another opportunity to blog about Doctor Who.  In one of those spooky coincidences that seem to happen a lot (note to self: keep an eye on entropy levels) our current trawl through New Who we last week arrived at The Idiot's Lantern  which as any fule kno is set at the time of the Coronation.

Here's the trailer:

Lighting the Beacons

We saw that there would be a Diamond Jubilee Beacon being lit on the Downs above our village, so we decided to go and watch it being lit.

Needless to say the location we had found on the website was incorrect, but a large cardboard sign directed us several hundred yards up the road, where the cars parked on the verge made us realise that something was happening.

There was a small crowd present, some of whom had been present for the Silver and Golden Jubilee Beacons, and we waited together and looked out over the dark plains below.  There was a wonderful sense of timelessness there, a feeling that we were sharing in something that stretched back at least to the Armada - or even earlier as there are so many ancient earthworks in our area. 

We did our best to ignore the signs of 21st Century Berkshire, and as we watched we spotted several beacons spread out across the landscape beneath us.

At 10.00pm the signal was given for someone to light ours: there was a countdown, a flash of flame, and then a great cheer.

We drove home listening to the soundtrack of the beacon sequence in The Lord of The Rings:

My Week with Marilyn

It's our AGM early next month, and we've decided to screen My Week with Marilyn.

Here are my notes:

My Week with Marilyn

UK2011                       101 minutes

Director:                      Simon Curtis

Starring:                        Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Redmayne, Emma Watson and Judi Dench

 Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress (Michelle Williams) and Best Supporting Actor (Kenneth Branagh)
• Nominated for six BAFTAs including Best British Film, Best Actress (Michelle Williams), Best Supporting Actress (Judi Dench) and Best Supporting Actor (Kenneth Branagh)
• A further 14 wins and 26 nominations

“In 1956, Marilyn Monroe came to Britain to make a movie at Pinewood Studios with Laurence Olivier. This was the tense and ill-fated light comedy The Prince and the Showgirl, scripted by Terence Rattigan, a film that became a legend for the lack of chemistry between its insecure and incompatible stars.  One was a sexy, feminine, sensual and mercurial diva.  The other would go on to make Some Like It Hot.  ... My Week With Marilyn is light fare: it doesn't pretend to offer any great insight, but it offers a great deal of pleasure and fun, and an unpretentious homage to a terrible British movie that somehow, behind the scenes, generated a very tender almost-love story.”

Peter Bradshaw

Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) is the Third Assistant Director on The Prince and the Showgirl which Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) is filming in the UK with Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) as both director and leading man.  Monroe has been accompanied to the UK by her husband Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott), but when he leaves her to return to the US she spends an intimate romantic week alone with Clark.  The film is based on a memoir that Colin Clark (son of Lord Clark of Civilisation and younger brother of Alan Clark, Conservative MP and famous diarist) wrote from the diaries that he kept about his time working with Olivier as a general dogsbody on The Prince and the Showgirl. 

Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh secured both critical praise and award nominations for their performances, but the film has casting in depth and includes established performers such as Judi Dench (as Sybil Thorndike), Julia Ormond (as Vivien Leigh) and Zoe Wanamaker (as Paula Strasberg, Marilyn Monroe’s acting coach) as well as relative newcomers such Eddie Redmayne (recently seen in Birdsong on TV) and Emma Watson (moving on from her role as Hermione in the Harry Potter films).

The screenplay is by Adrian Hodges who has worked extensively in television where, amongst his work, he has adapted two of Philip Pullman’s Sally Lockheart novels for TV as well as creating and writing episodes for Primeval and writing episodes for the BBC remake of Survivors.  Simon Curtis as director had worked extensively in theatre before making his television debut with Cranford.  He followed the success of this series with the widely acclaimed film A Short Stay in Switzerland, which starred Julie Walters in a true story of a woman who decided to take her own life in a Dignitas clinic.

Here's the trailer:

Films for the Jubilee

Everyone seems to be getting excited about the Cultural Olympiad linked to the Olympic Games (apparently they're happening in London and other venues around the country during the summer).  But to date I've not seen much about any cultural events to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee.

Following her success in Elizabeth Cate Blanchett returned to the role in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, which was set at the time of the Spanish Armada.  Despite a number of inaccuracies and liberties with history I enjoyed it very much and it went down well when we screened it for our Film Society.  On this basis I wonder if there is any mileage in Helen Mirren returning to the role of Elizabeth II in a sequel to The Queen.  In the first film Michael Sheen was uncannily brilliant portraying Blair in his early pomp, but I'd be struggling to cast either Cameron or Clegg.

Here are my notes for The Golden Age:  

ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE

UK, 2007 (114 minutes)

Director:          Shekhar Kapur

Starring:          Cate Blanchett, Clive Owen and Geoffrey Rush

Awards and Nominations

Oscars

Won                            Oscar for Best Costumes
Nominated                  Cate Blanchett (Actress in a Leading Role)

BAFTAS                     Four nominations, including Cate Blanchett for Best Leading Actress

A further three wins and seven nominations

In 1585 Catholic Spain, the most powerful country in Europe, is plotting to invade England and overthrow the heretic Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett).  Philip II has built an Armada and the execution of Mary Queen of Scots gives him the excuse he needs to launch it.  A combination of the naval skills of Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen), Spanish miscalculation and the English weather allow a numerically inferior English fleet to destroy the Armada and save both Queen and country.

 In the four centuries since her death Elizabeth I has become a chameleon figure who can reflect the cultural and political concerns of the age which chooses to portray her – especially in films and on TV.  In The Sea Hawk (1940) Flora Robson portrayed Elizabeth vigorously defending her Kingdom against foreign invasion, a situation with obvious parallels to the events of the Second World War; in the early 1970s Glenda Jackson gave a performance with a distinct feminist flavour in Elizabeth R; and in Shakespeare in Love (1998) Judi Dench transformed Elizabeth into a drama-loving deus (dea?) ex machina who resolved the complexities of the plot, while at the same time providing Shakespeare with an abundance of source material for his future plays.  Elizabeth I has also appeared memorably in both Black Adder and Doctor Who.

Cate Blanchett’s portrayal of Elizabeth in Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) offers a very different view of the queen, but one which again has similarities with our own recent history.  The first film shows the real dangers that Elizabeth faces both during the reign of her half-sister and after gaining the crown herself, when she has to overcome attempts to dethrone her by disaffected courtiers as well as defeating external rebellions, eventually realising that in order to consolidate her power and retain the throne she needs to remain unmarried.  In the later film Elizabeth is still receiving suitors from across Europe, but at the same time Catholic powers in Europe are plotting to overthrow her: she survives an unsuccessful assassination plot by religious zealots and then unites her subjects by portraying herself as a moderate who will defend English Protestants and Catholics against the fundamentalist practices of the Spanish Inquisition that would follow a successful invasion by the Spanish Armada.

Shekhar Kapur has rejected claims that his film is anti-Catholic; he sees it rather as a conflict between Philip who had no ability to encompass diversity or contradiction and Elizabeth who had a feminine ability to do precisely that.  This perspective compels him to interpret history with a significant degree of artistic licence: in 1585 Elizabeth was 52, although the film shows her still receiving suitors; Fotheringay Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded, is situated on the flat plains of Northamptonshire rather than on the banks of a picturesque loch; and Sir Walter Raleigh played only a minor in the defeat of the Spanish Armada.  In Alan Bennett’s memorable phrase this is histrionics rather than history, but it follows in a glorious tradition that we can trace back to Shakespeare.  Did anyone ever expect Richard III to give an accurate picture of pre-Tudor history?

Here's the trailer:

From The Archives...

We screened Volver in our first season, some time before I started this blog.

I have to own up to a massive whole in my film watching history: this was the first film by Almodóvar that I had ever seen, although I'd been aware of his work for many years.  Needless to say it blew me away and I now have my own copy of DVD as well.

this is one of the fist examples of me committing to produce notes on a film I had not seen.  Having just re-read the notes I hope they stand the test of time:

VOLVER/COMING HOME

Spain 2006, 121 minutes

Director:          Pedro Almodóvar

Starring:          Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura etc

Awards and Nominations:  

Cannes Film Festival: 

Winner:                                   Ensemble Cast (Joint Winners of Best Actress)

                                                Pedro Almodóvar (Best Screenplay)

Nomination:                            Golden Palm

Oscar Nominations:                Penélope Cruz (Best Actress in a Leading Role)

                 
BAFTA Nominations:            Best Film Not in the English Language

                                                Penélope Cruz (Best Actress in a Leading Role)       

Volver, which translates into English as Coming Home or Coming Back, is an intriguing melodrama inspired by the trash TV that is the soundtrack to its characters’ lives.  Penélope Cruz is Raimunda, a hard-working woman with a teenage daughter and a feckless, lazy husband.  With her sister Sole she tends the graves of her parents and visits her ailing aunt Paula, who is in the final stages of dementia.  There is a sudden act of violence which destroys Raimunda’s family life and a secret about her late mother Irene that emerges when Irene returns from beyond the grave to contact her astonished daughters.

Almodóvar is the most successful and internationally known Spanish filmmaker of his generation.  He started making films in 1980, but did not have his first international success until Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown in 1988.  He followed this with Live Flesh (1997), based on a novel by English crime writer Ruth Rendell, All About My Mother (1999), which won an Oscar for Best Foreign film and a Best Director Award for Almodóvar and which has just been staged as a play at the Old Vic in London, and Talk To Her (2002) which won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.  All his films are marked by complex narratives, employ the codes of melodrama and use elements of pop culture and irreverent humour.  He describes Volver as a cross between Mildred Pierce, in which a career woman takes the rap for a murder that her daughter has committed, and Arsenic and Old Lace, which involves a pair of old ladies involved in homicide, and in it he somehow manges to connect the various narrative strands into a lucid pattern of generational conflict and female bonding that remains psychologically convincing.

Penélope Cruz gives a brilliant performance as Raimunda, and in a superb female ensemble cast Carmen Maura, outrageous star of Almodóvar’s earlier films, as Irene also stands out.  Penélope Cruz was deservedly nominated for a Best Actress Award for her performance, but not for the fist time the Cannes Jury decided to go one better: having decided that it was impossible to choose between all the performances, they uniquely awarded the Best Actress Award to the Ensemble Cast.

Here's the trailer: